Q: Getting Started in Leantime: An Introduction to Setting Structure to the Work

<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2> <p><img src="https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/1589f37c72fef000/regular-dashboard_lwtwzq.png" alt="Leantime's My Work Dashboard View" /></p> <p>Welcome to Leantime! Getting started in Leantime will be a little different than what you’ve likely experienced in other tools. There’s a few reasons for this:</p> <ol> <li>Leantime focuses on your mission and your goals. You can’t work on the right tasks without knowing where you want to go. That’d be like going to the airport with an unmarked ticket and trying to find your gate.</li> <li>Accomplishing epic things usually means you have a team to work with but not everyone has the experience or training to manage the tools. That’s why we focus on easy to use and intuitive flows.</li> <li>We focus on people; on our experiences as humans and the uniqueness in how our brains work. We use psychology and cognitive science to support the details. Managing your work should be inspiring. You are doing amazing things.</li> </ol> <h2 id="thefirststepssettingstructure">The First Steps – Setting Structure</h2> <p>Setting structure comes from creating a hierarchy of information – going from the high level big picture down to the details of the everyday. </p> <p><img src="https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/1589f37c72fef000/high-level_kh1bnk.png" alt="Project Hierarchies in Leantime" /></p> <p>In this picture here, you can see that the project drop down starts with Strategy of VisionTech Solutions BU 1. It then drops down into two related Plans – Plan Customer Experience Enhancement Program and under that sits two Projects: O</p>

Question 1

Getting Started in Leantime: An Introduction to Setting Structure to the Work

Accepted Answer

Introduction

Leantime's My Work Dashboard View

Welcome to Leantime! Getting started in Leantime will be a little different than what you’ve likely experienced in other tools. There’s a few reasons for this:

Leantime focuses on your mission and your goals. You can’t work on the right tasks without knowing where you want to go. That’d be like going to the airport with an unmarked ticket and trying to find your gate.
Accomplishing epic things usually means you have a team to work with but not everyone has the experience or training to manage the tools. That’s why we focus on easy to use and intuitive flows.
We focus on people; on our experiences as humans and the uniqueness in how our brains work. We use psychology and cognitive science to support the details. Managing your work should be inspiring. You are doing amazing things.

The First Steps – Setting Structure

Setting structure comes from creating a hierarchy of information – going from the high level big picture down to the details of the everyday.

Project Hierarchies in Leantime

In this picture here, you can see that the project drop down starts with Strategy of VisionTech Solutions BU 1. It then drops down into two related Plans – Plan Customer Experience Enhancement Program and under that sits two Projects: O

Question 2

How To Use Leantime’s Strategy Management Software

Accepted Answer

A big part of keeping motivated throughout the course of a project is remembering why you’re doing the work in the first place. We aim to connect the ‘why’ to your work with our strategy management software. We use company-level strategy and goal management to share relevant strategies with your team and create long-term clarity on what you’re working towards.

Using Leantime as your Strategy Management Software

Leantime now offers Strategy Management on both the SaaS/cloud hosted version and now as a plugin for the open source community. For those on the SaaS platform, you can create a new strategy by clicking into the project drop down. Then click “Start Something New”.

Managing Strategies in Leantime

From there, you'll have the option to select one of three scenarios: Set a Direction, Create a Plan, or start a Project.

Setting the Big Picture

Select Create a Strategy.

A set Strategy in Leantime

From there you can give your strategy a title, choose who can view it, and fill out your Executive Summary, Company Purpose, and Strategic Vision. In doing this, we recommend thinking of Strategy through a few questions:

The questions

Question 3

Maximizing Project Value with Leantime’s Lean Canvas Template

Accepted Answer

While a business model canvas can provide you with an in-depth, holistic framework for your business model, Lean canvas aims to tackle this task in a faster fashion. The Lean Canvas is a powerful tool that helps entrepreneurs and business owners map out their business ideas and validate their assumptions in an efficient manner. In this article, you will learn how to use Leantime’s Lean Canvas to define the customer-problem-solution fit and the details of your business plan.

What is a Lean Canvas?

The Lean canvas aims to eliminate the time that is spent when developing a business model canvas. The idea of a Lean startup is centered around limiting time, processes, inventory, and money. As such, the Lean Canvas is a faster way to get ideas from your head and onto ‘paper’. Beyond being an alternative to the Business Model Canvas, Leantime’s template aims to identify real problems customers are facing and find solutions that actually solve their problems, otherwise known as the customer-problem-solution fit.

How to Use the Lean Canvas

Leantime’s Lean Canvas consists of 12 different factors to consider when creating your hypotheses for an actionable business plan. Navigate to Leantime’s Lean Canvas template under the Blueprints feature to begin creating your plan. Read our article on Blueprints here to fully understand how to navigate the tool.

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Question 4

Tracking Time On the My Work Dashboard

Accepted Answer

Leantime makes it easy to keep track of how you’re using your time with built in time tracking software featuring a pomodoro timer, time sheets and a start time button located in the corner of each to-to

Track time with the pomodoro timer

All you need to do is navigate to the “My Work” tab then drag and drop a task from your “My ToDos” to the pomodoro timer.

Track time within “My ToDos”

To start tracking time within a to-do you may click the 3 dots located at the top right hand side of a task. Once you’ve done that, select “start work” and begin tracking time.

This will start a timer on your to-do which will then show up in your timesheet table.

Track time using timesheets

Click on the timesheets view located on the left side of the screen.

Timesheets on My Work Dashboard

Here you will see a page that shows your timesheet for the week. This tracks how many hours you worked and on whi

Question 5

Leantime’s User Access Rights Breakdown

Accepted Answer

Within Leantime there are a variety of access roles that can be assigned to users depending on their company or a specific project. Each level of access rights comes with its own set of available and specific features. In this article, you’ll find all the details you need in one place.

The Roles

Leantime has six different roles for access rights: Owner, Admin, Company Manager, Editor, Commenter, and Read-Only. An owner has access to all features for a company or project while Read-Only has very limited access. Projects have one more type of user permission called inherit. Assigning a user to have inherit access on a project gives that user the same access on the project as they do in the company. The default setting for users when added to a project is inherit.

Assigning, Editing, and Managing User Access Rights

Assigning a User Access Role occurs when you add a user to a company or project. Users can have specific levels of access rights for projects they are assigned to that are different than their company access rights.

Company Based User Management

To add a new user to your company, first ensure your role is Admin or Owner so that you have access to Company and User Management. In the tool bar on the top of the screen, click the company icon, then click User Management.

Click the Add User button in the top left corner, you should see an edit

Question 6

Importing data via CSV

Accepted Answer

Our CSV importer allows you to import and update some of the most common objects in Leantime. The list of importable items is:

To-Dos
Milestone
Users
Projects
Ideas
Goals

You can find a list of available sheets and fields in this google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19teL4ZlOFbXciuoj7DLovs7pmEMWJcR71zNQS2QaEpg/edit#gid=0

Just download the sheet you need as CSV and fill in the content. Within the sheet you will get additional information about the content format and options.

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